Croatia's First Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Radimir Cacic announced his resignation at a news conference on Wednesday afternoon in Zagreb after the county court in the Hungarian city of Kaposvar earlier today found him guilty of a fatal traffic accident in Hungary in 2010 and sentenced him to 22 months in prison.
At the news conference Cacic reiterated that he was sorry for the two deaths and once again he extended his condolences to the Liptaks, the family of the victims of the fatal crash.
"The consequences are clear. I am resigning from all my positions in the government, as the coordinator of the economic sector and as the economy minister," Cacic said at the news conference which he held together with Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic.
PM Milanovic said he regretted Cacic's departure, stressing that his cabinet would miss Cacic very much.
Although he declined to cite possible candidates for Cacic's successor, Milanovic said he would likely choose a person to step in instead of Cacic by the end of this week. The premier said there would be no major changes.
After the appeals proceedings, the Kaposvar County Court announced on Wednesday morning that it handed down a non-suspended ruling sentencing Cacic to 22 months in prison for the 2010 traffic accident.
The Kaposvar court made the first-instance ruling on 29 June 2012 when it found Cacic guilty of causing a traffic accident with two fatalities in Hungary in 2010, and gave him a 22-month suspended sentence with a probation of three years.
Cacic's Chrysler hit a Skoda Fabia on the Nagykanisza-Budapest motorway on 8 January 2010, and two passengers from the Skoda Fabia died of injuries sustained in the crash.
Since the very beginning, Cacic claimed that he was driving at 125 km/hr, below the upper limit, when the accident occurred, and that he had entered a patch of fog which made visibility poor. The prosecutors claimed that Cacic failed to adjust his driving to the conditions on the motorway, which caused the fatal accident.
The trial began in September 2011.
"Cacic, 62, received the (latest) sentence in absentia for causing a fatal road accident in which two people died in Hungary on January 8, 2010," the MTI reported today.
"The court made a partial amendment to the lower court's decision, omitting a 3-year suspension on probation as well as a preliminary discharge," according to the MTI.
